Thomas On Healthcare?

John OCallaghan of Notre Dame writes this in response to John Breens claim about the Churchs proper response to the HHS mandate. A Thomist philosopher’s take on the matter:

But with the involvement of the state comes the coercive power of the state. And so there are at least two problems with the position that the very meaning of health and healthcare are subjective determinations of the autonomy of private individuals. The first is semantic and bears upon coherence. If the meaning of health and healthcare really are subjective determinations of the autonomy of private individuals, the state in mandating any sort of legislation concerning healthcare is quite literally legislating nothing. Any apparent law involving the terms health and healthcare are really schema with place markers or variables in them like X and Y, which of course means that they are not laws at all. Thus the incoherence—the law is not a law. And this brings me to the second problem with the position, the moral or political.